The color mounted into Isabel's face.
"No, ma'am, I would rather not; call me Isabel Chester, please, it was my father's name, and I love it, oh, how much!"
"You are a naughty, ungrateful little—well, well, I was a fool to expect anything else; Chester, as if I'd have a name in my house that has been registered on the Alms House books!"
"Is it a disgrace then, to be poor?" asked the child, innocently.
"A disgrace to be poor! certainly it is, and a great disgrace, too!" answered the lady, speaking from her heart, "or else why are people ashamed to own it?"
"Are they ashamed to own it? I didn't know," answered the child. "My father was poor, at the last, but I don't think he was ever ashamed of it, or ever to blame for it either."
"I dare say not; poor people are always shameless."
Isabel's eyes kindled and her passion rose.
"I won't hear my father abused—please, ma'am, I won't stand it; he wasn't poor till bad people made him so, and, and"—The child broke off, and burst into a passion of tears.
Mrs. Farnham was gratified. She had worried the poor child out of her silent moodiness, and now fell to soothing her exactly as she would have pulled the ears of a lap-dog, till he was ready to bite, and then patted him into good humor again.